How to avoid Scope Creep?

There are 2 main goals that you as the project manager would need to think about when dealing with scope creep.

1. When planning always plan as close to detail as possible.  Project control is very important, this would lead to reconfirming the plan, assessing performance, taking corrective action and keeping people informed (Portny, 2008).

     2.       Best approach to change.  Changes will occur during the project time, so during the planning time make sure there is a section that allows modification to occur with less agony as possible and communicate to your team about the changes (Portny, 2008).

Here is a real life example:

The location of my job, there are two major buildings that consist of 6 different alternative school programs.  Our school has one building all to ourselves the other building has the remaining 5 programs.  The plans of building an expansion to the other building has begun 3 weeks ago.  As the project began the crew closed off certain parts of the building still giving us access to specific sections of the building.  The all of a sudden we were told the section where we would use to walk through to get to the gym we would not be able to use because the project it a little bit of a snag.  The gas line needed to be changed before construction began, and this was in the original plan, but in the plans it was stated as contacting PSE&G and they will come in and make the changes before construction, well PSE&G is stating no one has called them and that they will have to wait their turn, this delay could take several weeks before PSE&G cones out to change the gas line.  Well this makes a big issue in the projects plan because they have a specific timeline and if they finish before a certain date, the construction company gets an incentive bonus.  Well the person who planned this project thought of the scope creep very well because of instead of waiting they will work on the expansion side they thought about doing at the end of the project and work backwards to give time for the PSE&G to come in and do their part.  The project manager met with all of the school’s principals and the head of the maintenance department to inform them of the changes that need to occur and apologized for the changes.  So now our school and another will be taking a detour for next 6 months when walking up to the gym, but at least we know we will only be dealing with this at the beginning of the project and not at the end.  The project manger did a great job of making the changes needed for the project to continue as planned.
  
Portny, S.E., Mantel, S.J., Meredith, J.R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M.M., & Kramer, B. E., (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken. NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Tools for Project Management

For my project management class I needed to post two resource tools that would be useful in estimating the costs, effort, and/or activity durations associated with ID projects.  Below I have found two tools I like the first one is a directly below. Click on link to get insights on improving the decision process and the paradox world of bad decisions. I found this tool interesting because it gave some ideas to thin about and the meaning behind the mathematical calculations.  Since I have a back ground in Math, I found this tool fairly easy to follow.  If Math is not your strong suit then the next tool would be better for your liking.

http://www.visionarytools.com/decision-making/3-point-estimating.htm

The other tool is below for you to click on.  In this website “pptmagic.com” gives ideas on Project Management, but mostly are already developed calculations tools.   

http://www.pptmagic.com/projectmgm.htm

Here you have two tools that both will lead to the same result for your project management, the difference one helps you understand the meaning behind the calculations and how to produce your own calculation tool, the other tool also can give you the meaning but also the formulas are already made for you so all you have to do is plug in the numbers and the tool will produce the figures and even graph the solutions, to help you get out more data solutions. 

Which tool do you find helpful?